Eight U.S. inspectors general filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump and his administration on Wednesday, alleging their firings violated federal law. The inspectors general asked the U.S. District Court in Washington to declare they remained lawfully in their roles at their agencies and asked the court to prevent the administration from obstructing their official duties.
The lawsuit (seen HERE) was filed by eight of the 17 inspectors general fired by Trump from the departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, State, Agriculture, Education, Labor and the Small Business Administration. The lawsuit states that “the purported firings violated unambiguous federal statutes — each enacted by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed into law by the president — to protect Inspectors General from precisely this sort of interference with the discharge of their critical, non-partisan oversight duties,” adding that Trump’s “attempt to eliminate a crucial and longstanding source of impartial, non-partisan oversight of his administration is contrary to the rule of law.”
Per the lawsuit, the firings violated the Inspector General Act, which only allows a president to remove IGs after notifying Congress at least 30 days in advance and provide a substantive case-specific rationale. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa and Sen. Dick Durbin said in a letter to Trump that IGs can be fired by presidents, but it must be done legally: “while IGs aren’t immune from committing acts requiring their removal, and they can be removed by the president, the law must be followed. IGs are critical to rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct within the Executive Branch bureaucracy, which you have publicly made clear you are also intent on doing.”
That law amended the Inspector General Reform Act of 2008, according to the lawsuit: “Just four days into his current term, however, President Trump, acting through a two-sentence email sent by the director or deputy director of the Office of Presidential Personnel, purported to remove from office (supposedly on account of “changing priorities”) nearly a score of IGs (while retaining only two cabinet-level IGs). In the last four decades, no incoming President has attempted upon taking office to remove en masse the IGs appointed in prior administrations.”
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